


Great at Hospitals

by fabrega



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Clint Barton gets visitors at the hospital, and one time he pays a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Great at Hospitals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scifigirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifigirl/gifts).



> Because hospitals suck, even for Avengers.
> 
> Thanks to Alex for the initial read, and to Kenneth for help with the anagram.

**one**

Clint Barton hasn't been with SHIELD for very long before he lands in the hospital. His whole life has been one dumb risk after another; the only reason he hasn't spent more time in hospitals is that this is the first thing he's had that passes for a job and offers health insurance. He'd taken another dumb risk on his last mission and had hobbled back to SHIELD HQ with what he thought was a broken wrist and maybe a sprained muscle in his chest. It had turned out to be a broken wrist, three broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen. The doctors patch him up as best they can, and then he is left alone and fidgeting in his room for recovery.

_Visitors are only allowed until 8pm_ , they tell him, as if anyone he knows is going to show up here.

Half an hour later, Agent Coulson is at his door.

"The nurse said you're doing well," Coulson says, not leaving the doorway. "How're you feeling?"

"Pretty good. They've got me on a couple different kinds of drugs--they told me which ones, but I don't remember. There's nothing on TV."

This is apparently as much permission as Coulson needs to enter, because when Clint finishes talking, Coulson strides in and stands next to Clint's bed. He is glowering, the same angry edge to his posture that Clint remembers hearing in his voice on the comms. "So what the hell happened out there, Barton?"

Clint sighs, tries to roll over on his other side, facing away from Coulson. He wishes he had found something to watch on TV. If he had, this might never have happened.

"Because what it looked like," Coulson continued, addressing Clint's back, "was that you deliberately disobeyed protocol and orders from your handler."

"I took a risk, and it paid off," Clint says to the wall.

"Yeah, but it won't always," Coulson shoots back.

Clint snorts. "And you've spent enough money training me that I'm worth more to you alive than dead, right?" He's heard a variant of this speech a number of times in his life, and it has always sucked. (Even worse, he'd spent a good chunk of his childhood working towards the point where someone could truthfully give him this speech. That hasn't made it suck any less.)

Exasperated, Coulson asks him, "Is there anything in your life that makes it worth living for you?"

It is maybe probably the drugs he's on that make him roll over and stare at Coulson, dumb Coulson and his dumb suit and his dumb tie and his dumb face and the dumb way that kindness and worry are still pulling at the edges of his eyes despite his anger. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Clint cannot look away. It's maybe _definitely_ the drugs that make him respond: "I dunno. Maybe."

Coulson sits down on the edge of the bed. If Clint didn't know any better, he'd say Coulson almost looked hopeful. "Maybe?"

It's not the drugs that make him grab Phil Coulson's hand; that's all Clint Barton.

 

**two**

The room drifts into focus just in time for Clint to catch Director Fury mid-sentence: "--through a window?"

"Yes, sir," Coulson confirms. "As I understand it, Agents Romanov and Barton landed on the men they'd pushed out ahead of them."

"That's still quite a fall," Fury says. "I can see how Barton would have twisted his ankle. But the rest of it?"

Clint suddenly feels like he needs to be contributing to this conversation. "Nat carried me out, sir."

"And used you as a human shield, by the look of it." Fury gestures at one, two, three bullet wounds on Clint's upper body.

"Not in a bad way," Clint says, aware of how that sounds. "Didn't hit any major organs, and if she'd gone down, neither of us would have made it out of there."

"So using one of my agents as body armor was a matter of utility?" Fury sounds skeptical, and Clint can't blame him. Agent Romanov is...relatively new to the organization, and she's still a probationary field agent. Coming back basically unharmed from an op while your partner's all shot up doesn't look good, that's for sure.

"I couldn't walk, and carrying me was slowing her down. What else was she supposed to do?"

"There are protocols for this kind of situation--" Coulson begins, but he stops as Clint glares at him.

"You'd just told us that our extraction had failed and we were on our own," Clint reminds him. "I'll take Nat's extraction over no extraction."

Fury sets his jaw. "I'll take that under advisement. Agent Barton. Agent Coulson." He nods at both of them, and then he and his trench coat swish out of the room.

"You really shouldn't antagonize him," Coulson chides. "He _is_ your boss--and Natasha's boss, and _my_ boss."

"Well, he shouldn't doubt my partner. I'm not joking, Coulson; I'd be just another corpse on top of the pile of them under that window in Kiev without her." He looks up and sees Coulson's pained expression. Futz. "Sorry."

"It's the job," Coulson says, shrugging.

"Aww, Phil," Clint replies, reaching out and brushing Coulson's fingers with his own.

"Natasha's downstairs in the lobby," Coulson says, his fingers brushing back. "Would you like me to send her up?"

"Prob'ly should," Clint says. He really isn't on enough pain meds for this, but it has to happen.

Coulson escorts Agent Romanov up to Clint's room, and then leaves the two of them alone. Natasha stands against the far wall of Clint's room and doesn't say anything.

"It looks worse than it is," Clint volunteers.

A nurse comes in, checks his vital signs, and gives him a handful of pills to take and a small carton of juice. Clint swallows the pills dry and takes a swig of the juice as a chaser. "Thanks for getting me out of there," he says once the nurse is gone. "I know it would have been easier to leave me."

"You wouldn't have left me there," Natasha counters. "We're partners; why should it be any different for you than for me? Besides, I had to get you back in one...in mostly one piece. I'm pretty sure Coulson would never forgive me if I brought his boyfriend home in a body bag."

Clint chokes on his juice. "What?! How did you--"

Natasha makes a disbelieving face at him. "Really, Barton? We work for an organization of super-spies."

 

**three**

The last thing Clint remembers is the ground approaching very, very quickly.

The things he remembers before that: Tony Stark grabs him by the collar and hoists him upwards for a better vantage point, and then Tony Stark swears-- _shit, shit, shit_ \--a sound that grows further and further away as the ground approaches.

When he opens his eyes, he is in the hospital. Several of his limbs are immobilized, and his head hurts like nobody's futzing business.

"Oh, good, you're awake." The room resolves itself, and there stands Tony Stark.

"You dropped me," Clint manages.

"Hello to you too," Tony says, his voice still somehow cheerful.

"You _dropped_ me," Clint repeats, his voice croaking less as he uses it.

"You need to talk to your top-secret spy agency about getting a less slippery costume, Merida," Tony replies. This time, he sounds defensive. After a moment, his face softens. "Look, I'm sorry. I...I messed up." He basically collapses into the chair next to the bed. If he was anybody except Tony Stark, Clint might think he'd been beating himself up over it.

Clint says, with an attempted shrug, "It happens." The shrug doesn't happen, and he tries several more times before continuing, "But seriously, what happened?"

"Grip miscalibration," Tony explains. "New suit, made some modifications, ended up with less oomph to the gloves' grip than I thought I had. I dropped you, and you fell pretty much face-first onto a parked car."

Clint chuckles. "I knew it. A hatchback, right?"

Tony raises an eyebrow. "I didn't realize you were some kind of parked-car-crushing expert."

"You can't help what you're good at," Clint replies with another not-shrug. As Tony begins to argue with him about the feasibility of a Hawkeye-themed jetpack and how it would or wouldn't interfere with Clint's quiver, Clint suddenly notices the morphine-dispensing clicker that has shown up by his one maneuverable hand. He peers at the morphine drip machine, taking in the already-dispensed dosage and its time limits, does a little math, and then looks at Tony Stark again. The apology that's there is even better than the one Tony had said aloud.

"Oh, by the way, I saw one of those SHIELD agents lurking around your room," Tony says, dragging Clint back into the conversation. "I sent him away, because the last thing you need to be thinking about right now is work, buddy."

"Which one?" Clint asks, trying to keep his tone neutral. "Agent Coulson?"

"Yeah, probably," Tony says. "Why?"

 

**four**

Dr. Banner has not stopped apologizing since he walked into Clint's room. Clint is hooked up to several different IVs, which means he is Bruce's captive audience, a fact he is not enjoying.

"I threw you through a wall!" Bruce says. His face is screwed up with remorse.

"It was more of a window," Clint says, trying his best to placate Bruce. He is not a huge fan of Bruce Banner being upset. "A large, plate-glass window--and it wasn't _you_ , exactly?"

"Right, that makes it better. _The Hulk_ threw you through a wall."

"Window," Clint corrects.

"Okay, window. The Hulk threw you through a window." 

"Look," Clint says, beginning to feel a little nervous, "Here's the way I remember it: I was knocked off the top of a building and headed straight for an uncomfortable collision with somebody's balcony if I couldn't get my grapple arrow off in time. The Big Guy saw that, caught me midair, and deposited me somewhere...safer."

"Through a window," Bruce repeats, his head in his hands.

"It's the thought that counts," Clint says firmly. "And if that glass shard hadn't caught my artery, I'd have been right back on my feet!"

Bruce sighs. "See, now you're not helping again."

"I told you about the time Stark dropped me, right?" Clint grins and smoothes down one of the bandages on his nose. "Stop apologizing. I've been through worse, and you and the Big Guy both meant well. Besides, I'm basically a regular here." 

It's true, too--he'd only been mostly conscious when he was admitted this time, but he definitely remembered some of the nurses just shaking their heads at him in an _oh, you_ sort of way. One of the doctors had looked at his chart and remarked _good lord, this man needs to stop falling off of buildings_. 

"You're sure it's fine?" Bruce says.

Clint nods just as Coulson knocks on the hospital room door. "Dr. Banner! I didn't expect to find you here."

"Agent Coulson, hi. I was just heading out, I think." He looks at Clint, who nods at him again, his cue to leave. "Well, I'm sure I'll see you around, Barton."

Clint smiles at Bruce as he departs and then turns his attention to the bandages on his face, which are in dire need of some fiddling-with.

"Through a window?" Coulson asks rhetorically, a hint of teasing in his voice.

"Come on, that's basically just 'Wednesday' for me," Clint says.

"Don't I know it," Coulson says, and Clint tries to riddle out what _that_ tone of voice means.

 

**five**

Steve Rogers, Carol Danvers, and Tony Stark are standing in the doorway of Clint's hospital room. Steve is holding a large pastel vase full of flowers. There is a small card tucked in among the blossoms. Steve has just exclaimed: "Good grief!"

All three of his visitors are staring into the far corner of Clint's room, where a number of large floral arrangements shaped like letters are clustered, each standing on its own separate easel.

Carol catches on the quickest, and she cannot keep the glee from her face. She punches Tony in the arm and says, "Tony, you _didn't_!"

Tony seems to be doing a number of things at once: responding to Carol ("I didn't, did I?"); counting and rearranging the visible letters in his head; and tapping his Bluetooth headset on and telling it to dial Stark Tower.

Steve still looks bewildered. "Why does it say BUTTS?"

"It's 'SORRY ABOUT YOUR DATE'," Carol explains. 

"No, that's definitely BUTTS." Steve's not wrong. He's looking right at it.

Clint raises his hand. "I did that." One of the nurses had watched him earlier as he shuffled around with his IV stand, pushing the letters into various funny combinations. Deciding to leave it like this was possibly the best thing that had happened today.

He knows why they'd shown up, too, the flowers and his teammates. He'd made the mistake of carefully sharing his evening plans with the others before the AIM goons had crashed in. He'd been all set to enjoy a home-cooked meal and a night at the movies--something nice, fun, mundane--right up until the point when a big chunk of building had landed on him. No one's entirely sure who had knocked it off the side of the skyscraper, but apparently at least a few of the Avengers felt guilty about it.

Tony's call has finally gone through. "JARVIS, did you do this?" Tony barks into his headset. "No, don't answer that. I know you did. I was _joking_ when I suggested the giant letters, what exactly made you think--"

Steve walks over to the bed and hands Clint the vase they'd brought. "Apparently these weren't necessary," he says, looking embarrassed. 

"It cost _how_ much?! I don't care how many times he's been in the hospital; that is an unacceptable amount of money to spend on something that's going to die within the week--" Tony gripes into his headset. Carol has her phone out and is taking photos of the giant floral BUTTS.

"They're great, Cap. Thanks," Clint says. He opens the card. It says FEEL BETTER SOON in Steve's neat script. "Could somebody put these by the window? That's what you do with plants, right? Sunlight?"

An hour later, like he'd promised, Coulson shows up after the day's SHIELD debrief. Once his guests had left, Clint had dragged the letters around again, so Coulson is greeted with a floral display that reads SORRY ABOUT OUR DATE.

From his bed, Clint lets out a weak _Ta-da!_

 

**(and one)**

Clint knocks gently on the hospital room door, and then shuffles inside. He clutches at the ribbon of the Captain America balloon he is now greatly regretting purchasing. You brought stuff to people in the hospital, right? It had seemed completely reasonable at the store, but now it feels ridiculous.

Agent Hill is seated in the chair by the bed; she'd been the one who'd answered his knock. Coulson is in the bed itself, looking drowsy and more than a little beat up, although he lights up at the sight of the balloon.

"How are you feeling, Coulson?" Clint asks, offering him the balloon.

"I've been better," Coulson whispers. "It feels like someone dropped a train on me."

"That's not far off," Agent Hill says. She takes the balloon from Clint and ties it to the hospital bed's side rail. "We're still not sure how they found the base of operations, but they sure did a number on it. The explosives launched a several-hundred-pound crate into the air, and it landed on right on top of Agent Coulson."

"I couldn't have let it land on Agent Sitwell, or I'd have never heard the end of it. And it landed on my leg, mostly," Coulson adds, as though that makes it not so bad, "Although I guess there's also some shrapnel in my torso? Something about my lungs, I don't know. "

"Well, I'm glad you're doing okay," Clint says, for whatever value of 'okay' makes that sentence true. "I'm sorry I couldn't have been there to push you out of the way."

"It's the job. Can't let you have all the fun," Coulson whispers, smiling faintly.

"But I'm _great_ at hospitals," Clint responds. He knows his grin is desperate. He doesn't like the helpless feeling that comes from being on this side of the visitor-visitee exchange--he wants to leave, to go hit up target practice until he feels back in control of something.

"Will you stay with me for a little while?" Coulson asks.

Clint looks at Hill, who shrugs at him and vacates her chair. "I'll be in the lobby if you need anything," she says, patting him on the shoulder as she walks past. 

Clint sits down carefully in the chair, laces his fingers through Coulson's on the bed. "You're gonna be fine," he says aloud.

"I know that," Coulson whispers back. "Do you?"


End file.
